Sydney, March 14: Plumbers were reportedly called to a Sydney apartment – once shared by Lara Bingle and Michael Clarke to search for an “item of significant value” lost down a toilet.
And according to The Sun-Herald newspaper that item was the $200,000 diamond engagement ring belonging to bikini model Lara Bingle, who on Friday – in the full blaze of the Australian media spotlight – broke up with fiance and Aussie cricket vice-captain, Michael Clarke.
The Sydney newspaper quoted an employee from Twin Pipes plumbers saying they had a call about 2.30am (AEDT) to the apartment block where the high-profile couple lived reporting that “someone had placed something, worth a lot of money, down the toilet.”
After looking for the item for several hours, they brought in a camera to inspect the pipe lines, but still failed to locate the missing item.
The plumber told the newspaper was not unusual to “retrieve certain valuable items from drains after these sorts of flashpoints”, but as to the chance of retrieving a ring from a toilet, he rated it “50-50”.
The break-up of the couple has been the subject of intense media coverage in Australia, with pages of coverage along with opinion columns in Sunday’s newspapers, in both the news and sport sections.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that Bingle’s family are planning to sell the “inside story” behind the relationship to Australian magazines.
Energy drink Synergy has also dumped the couple from its lucrative advertising campaign in the wake of their break-up, releasing a statement saying the couple “no longer represented the brand’s values”.
Clarke left the Australian cricket team’s tour of New Zealand to return to home to Bondi on Monday, a week after the publication of a naked picture of Bingle, taken in the shower by a married Aussie rules footballer during their 2006 affair.
The photograph, which has reportedly circulated in Australian sporting circles via mobile phone for some time, sparked a war of words about its release, publication and whether Bingle knew the AFL star who took it, Brendan Fevola, was married and the time of their brief relationship.
Recently Bingle also attracted headlines when her car – a $250,000 Aston Martin given to her by Clarke – was stolen, then recovered.
Reports of the flushed diamond ring Sunday led to a viewer on one breakfast news show suggesting that a person would flush an expensive diamond ring down the toilet “because you can’t flush an Aston Martin”.
Bingle, 23, and Clarke, 28, have been referred to as Australia’s “Posh and Becks” in a comparison to England soccer star David Beckham and his wife, former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.
——-Agencies